Halo 3 Review – Triple Kill…

Reviewer: DarkArmada

September 25th, Finish the Fight, Believe – these are all terms that we have had in our vocabulary at one stage or another in the past 12 months. This just goes to show Microsoft’s marketing muscle when it comes to their flagship title for the Xbox 360, Bungie’s Halo 3. Whether you liked it or not, almost everyone on this planet has been touched in one way or another by this massive campaign. Is Halo 3 just another cog in Microsoft’s hype machine, or has Bungie come out with one of the best games we’ve seen to hit the Xbox 360 this year?

One word comes to mind when you first drop the disc in your console – Epic. The music, the visuals and even the opening menu just comes across as colossal. Myself being an avid Halo gamer in the past, was only concerned with one thing, the Solo Campaign. As recommended by many, I played my first experience on Heroic difficulty, of which there are four – Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary.

From the first cutscene you know that you are playing the next generation of Halo. There is no more of that “texture popup” that we were all familiar with in Halo 2, just smooth and clear animation. The first mission starts off slow, but that’s about where it ends. Straight away, any Halo veteran will feel a strange sense of déjà vu. It seems that Bungie has looked for a good balance between familiarity and change. Everything just feels Halo, but this has both been a blessing and a curse. Some enjoy the carbon copy feel, while others are looking for innovation.

Do not fret. I’m not going to give away a single plot detail here. I’ll just say that you’ll find yourself coming out with a lot of “Ohhhh, so that’s what happens!” as even up to the final few cutscenes you’re still kept guessing. I’ll compare it to any well written plot conclusion, this is what you’ve all been waiting for! Then again, what will keep you coming back to Halo 3 again and again is of course the multiplayer across XboxLive.

If you have played the Halo 3 Beta that was released earlier this year, you should have a fair idea for the feel of the game, the menus, controls etc. For those of you that haven’t, or have not even played a Halo game before, never fear! The menus are simply laid out and you should have your head wrapped around them in no time. If you require further info, Bungie have a detailed FAQ on their website (http://www.bungie.net/).

Halo 3’s multiplayer comes in an assortment of flavours. You can play up to 4-player Co-op across XboxLive and you’ve got your usual suspects with all available split screen play options. Hitting the matchmaking boards you have both social and ranked playlists with a “beginners” playlist for your first few games. Debuting in Halo 3 is a universal “EXP” or Experience rank. This is tracked across both ranked and social playlists and gives other players an indication of your overall skill and quality of play.

Along with this system, comes the usual “LVL” in each particular ranked playlist to assist in the matchmaking system fairly placing you in similar skilled groups. The playlists in both social and ranked are similar to what we’ve seen in the past Halo titles and we’ve been blessed with a new range of maps for all our gaming pleasure. To add to this, Bungie are hard at work developing new maps for download in the future.

Two HUGE features to be added to the Halo franchise are Forge and Saved Films. Forge gives you the ability to manipulate multiplayer maps on the fly, moving spawns, objects, weapons and even goals. It does not allow you to physically change the map itself, but you’ll be able to move anything that isn’t bolted down, so to speak. The controls in this are quick and easy to get a hold of and you have the ability to use Forge mid game, allowing teams to drop weapons, power-ups or even vehicles where needed. Feel free to drop a tank on members of the other team, it never grows old.

The other major feature added to Halo 3 is Saved Films. This allows you to return to a previous multiplayer or solo campaign experience to edit and even save your gameplay. Saved Films drops you in the director’s seat giving you multiple camera angles, plus a free roam ability to play that Killtacular over and over again. Hit save and upload it to Bungie.net to share with your friends, or even pull screenshots out of the film to save as HD pictures of your elite skill. Again, controls are easy to come to grips with however the lack of a rewind function can get frustrating. Definitely a huge win for the machinima community.

As I said earlier, the sound and look of Halo 3 is nothing short of epic. Whether it’s the orchestrated soundtrack, the thousands of intricate pre-recoded sound effects and voice acting or the HD visuals, Halo 3 is what next generation is all about. Yes, it looks so similar to the two Halo games before it, but that’s why we play. Bungie has followed the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality and it’s come through for them to the end.

All in all, Halo 3 is a fitting completion to the trilogy and the folks at Bungie should all be proud. However, I feel that playing through this game was old news before I’d even opened the wrapping, which is a shame for such a highly anticipated game. This is a must have in your gaming library, whether you pick up the Standard, Limited or Legendary editions and will be a game that we all play for years. Maybe I am a spoilt gamer? Maybe I expect too much from the FPS genre? Maybe games like Bioshock have jaded me away from multiplayer based titles such as Halo 3? Whatever it is, Bungie’s Halo 3 is amazing, but something was missing…

© 2007-8 Lee Edgerton

9.5/10 – Truly Epic